Yerma
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Title: | Yerma |
Original title: | Yerma |
Genus: | tragedy |
Original language: | Spanish |
Author: | Federico García Lorca |
Publishing year: | 1934 |
Premiere: | December 29, 1934 |
Place of premiere: | Teatro Español, Madrid |
Place and time of the action: | Area in Andalusia at the time of the premiere |
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Yerma is a drama in three acts and six pictures by Federico García Lorca . The poet himself described his work as "tragic poetry". The piece was premiered on December 29, 1934 at the Teatro Español in Madrid . In the German-speaking area, it was first staged on April 15, 1944 in the Schauspielhaus Zurich .
action
The drama takes place in a rural area in Andalusia (Spain) in the early 1930s.
first act
First picture: Room in Yerma's house
Yerma has been married to Juan for two years and can't understand why she still hasn't become a mother. But her husband sees children as just a cost factor and opposes their wishes. He doesn't have much time for his wife; he works obsessively to get some wealth.
Yerma receives a visit from her friend Maria, who is already pregnant even though she has only been married five months. The two talk about joys and hardships with children. When Mary has gone, the shepherd Victor comes. He surprised to find Yerma alone. Actually, he just wanted to bring Juan the two sheep that Juan had ordered from him. When Victor notices that Yerma is cutting diapers, he thinks she is finally in good anticipation. But she explains to him that the diapers are intended for Maria's child. You can feel that Yerma's heart beats more for the shepherd than for her husband.
Second picture: field
One year later.
Yerma has brought lunch to her husband, who works in the olive field. On the way home, she meets an old woman who has done the same. Both get into conversation with each other. Their conversation mostly revolves around the possible causes of Yerma's childlessness and their remedies. The old woman was married twice and gave birth to 14 children. At a young age she seems to have been quite fun-loving. She advises Yerma not to live chastely and asks her about her relationship with her husband. Yerma admits that her father chose the man for her according to old tradition, even though she was actually in love with the shepherd Victor. But she had come to terms with the man who was meant for her because she believed that she would become a mother soon after the wedding. But the longer her childlessness lasts, the more her indifference towards Juan turns into hatred.
Second act
First picture: At the mountain stream
Village women washing their laundry in the mountain stream whisper about the relationship between Juan and Yerma. You learn that there is more and more crackling between her and the shepherd Victor. Apparently this had also come to Juan's ears. That is why he took his two single sisters into his house so that they could watch over Yerma because he could hardly look after them because of all the work.
Second picture: room in Yerma's house
Juan blames his sisters for letting Yerma go out of the house alone. After all, he only took them in so that they could monitor Yerma for free board and lodging. One of them must always accompany her when she leaves the house.
When Yerma returns with two full water jugs, the couple get into an argument. Juan doesn't want her to go out and talk to other people so often. She tells him how much he humiliates her so that she gets worse every day, how much she longs for a child. Juan repeatedly insists on how important it is to him that she, as his wife, have to comply with social conventions so that his family honor is not tarnished. Yerma, however, maintains that a peasant woman who does not bear children is as useless as a handful of thorn branches.
When Yerma is alone in the room, Victor comes to say goodbye because he wants to leave the village. This makes them sad. She remembers the time of her youth when she was still close friends with Victor and they both believed they were meant for each other. But Victor's decision is made. He has sold all of his herds to Juan and is moving away.
Third act
First image: Dolores' house
It begins to meet. Yerma comes with the necromancer Dolores and two old women. It is learned that the four of them went to the cemetery one night, praying fervently that God would give Yerma a son. Dolores assures us that the wish will come true. Suddenly you hear a loud shouting outside. Juan is glad that he has finally found his wife, but they immediately clash again and repeat the old allegations.
Second picture: Surroundings of a hermitage in the middle of the mountains
Women go to church barefoot with offerings. You take part in a pilgrimage to solicit a child from the saint laid out there. Yerma is among them. When the women return from the hermitage, Yerma meets the old woman again (from the first act). This is v. a. come to enjoy the spectacle. She thinks the whole thing is nonsense. Yerma advises her to leave her husband and move in with her. She lives with one of her sons under the same roof, and he desperately needs a wife. Then her desire to have children will soon come true. Although Yerma longs for nothing more than a child, the promise of marital fidelity is sacred to her. Therefore she rejects the suggestion of the ancients.
Juan followed his wife and overheard their conversation. Once again it becomes clear that he only took one woman to satisfy his physical lust. He demands that Yerma give up the desire to have a child for good. Yerma gets so furious about this that the anger gives her unimagined powers. She lets out a scream and pushes her husband's throat. It falls over backwards. She presses until he dies.
annotation
Yerma, together with Blood Wedding and Bernarda Albas Haus, forms an apparent trilogy that deals with the position of women in the rural population. Still, only Yerma and Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) form part of the originally planned trilogy. Lorca wanted to deal with the themes of infertility (Yerma), adultery (Bodas de Sangre) and incest in his trilogy, but due to his untimely death he was unable to write the last work of the trilogy. "La Casa de Bernarda Alba" is often seen as the third work in the trilogy. Although the works agree in some elements, such as the setting in Andalusia and the strong presence of women as protagonists, there are still differences in form and content compared to "La Casa de Bernarda Alba". Lorca's style is characterized by a combination of secular tradition and 20th century modernism . In the drama the conversations alternate between prose and poetry.
filming
The drama was filmed in a German-Hungarian co-production in 1984 based on García Lorca's stage poetry. Gudrun Landgrebe , Titusz Kovács, Mathieu Carrière , Mareike Carrière and Martin Halm played the leading roles under the direction of Barna Kabay and Imre Gyöngyössy . The 107-minute film first hit German cinemas on February 8, 1985. The lexicon of international film judges: Without a convincing combination of a realistic image of time and poetic exaggeration into the timeless, the film by the two Hungarian filmmakers Kabay / Gyöngyössy, who work in the Federal Republic, loses itself in folkloric impressions and flat metaphor.
Opera
The Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos set the piece to music for an opera in three acts in 1955/56. It was premiered in Santa Fe about twelve years after his death on August 12, 1971.
source
The drama in the German translation by Enrique Beck (together with Bluthochzeit ), Suhrkamp Library, first edition 1975, licensed edition by (c) Insel Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1954